CitySprouts is a 501(3) nonprofit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 based in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

 that partners with public school teachers and other school staff to develop outdoor classrooms and garden

Garden

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...

s in local school yards. CitySprouts also collaborates with local farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

s, restaurant chef

Chef

A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...

s and the Cambridge Public School District (CPSD) food service

Foodservice

Food Service or catering industry defines those businesses, institutions, and companies responsible for any meal prepared outside the home...

 program to bring urban school children the experience of growing, preparing and eating good, healthy food.

CitySprouts is a district-wide program in all 12 of the city's public elementary and middle schools. During the fall and spring, CitySprouts staff supports teachers' use of the school garden as an outdoor classroom during the teaching day. CitySprouts staff devote 10 hours a week in each partner school between April and November to oversee garden maintenance, coordinate its use, and to assist teachers who extend their classroom lessons into the CitySprouts garden. About 75% of the Pre-kindergarten

Pre-Kindergarten

Pre-kindergarten refers to the first formal academic classroom-based learning environment that a child customarily attends in the United States. It begins between the ages of 3-5 depending on the length of the program...

 - 8th grade teachers in Cambridge Public Schools report using their school garden for teaching purposes at least one time and as many as twenty times for science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, math, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and other subjects.

CitySprouts is currently working with the Cambridge Public School District to integrate the gardening program into the science curriculum for all grade levels.

CitySprouts summer youth program connects youth to their local food system and builds connections to the urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

 natural environment. Teams of middle school youth from each of the city's schools maintain the school garden and take field trips to farmers' market

Farmers' market

A farmers' market consists of individual vendors—mostly farmers—who set up booths, tables or stands, outdoors or indoors, to sell produce, meat products, fruits and sometimes prepared foods and beverages...

s and rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 and urban local farms.

Milestones

• In 2010 CitySprouts began consulting with schools in the Boston area
  Greater Boston
  Greater Boston is the area of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surrounding the city of Boston. Due to ambiguity in usage, the size of the area referred to can be anywhere between that of the metropolitan statistical area of Boston and that of the city's combined statistical area which includes...
  
  .
• CitySprouts was one of six area nonprofits selected as a 2008 Social Innovator by the Cambridge-based Social Innovation Forum.

Mission

The CitySprouts mission is to develop, implement, and maintain beautiful, resource-rich school gardens in collaboration with public school communities. Integrated into the curriculum, CitySprouts gardens inspire teachers, students, and families with a deep, hands-on connection to the food cycle, sustainable agriculture, and the natural environment.